Rocky, 1979: ABBA is being mysterious

During the rehearsals for their 41-city-tour, ABBA was almost completely shielded from the outer world. Still, Rocky was able to talk to them.

“Actually, this time we didn’t want to do any interviews at all, until the rehearsals for our new tour had been completed,” Björn explained, when the four from ABBA arrived right on time for the scheduled photo session. “Because we don’t want to take the risk that glitches will occur during the first concerts of our tour and our fans will be disappointed.”
The team from Sweden has plenty of fans. The concerts in the UK, Scotland and Ireland with 75.000 tickets available, were sold out within one day. In Denmark, the ABBA tickets were even on sale for only half a day.
“Of course, that’s a great success for us,” says Anni-Frid, “but it means a tremendous obligation as well. We have to be better than ever.”
And to live up to these expectations, the entire ABBA crew, together with six musicians and three backing singers, withdrew in a film studio in Stockholm for almost a month.
“We have tried out every step, every song, every sound and light effect, until we were fed up with it.” No one wanted or was allowed to tell us how their costumes and their show will look like. “Whoever says something, will be sacked,” Benny threatened, “because we want to offer a real surprise to our fans. Everything that’s being said about it before the start of the tour is very far-fetched.”
When ABBA comes to Germany at the end of October, they will already have performed 19 concerts. “But you don’t need to worry that we will be too worn out by then to put on a good show,” Agnetha remarked preventively. “We love our job, and when we get a good response from the audience and we don’t get bugged too much in between the concerts, the stress of the tour doesn’t matter to us.”